Buffalo, NY is the latest loser of industrial civilization’s destabilization of the climate with a tally of 13 dead, 30 major roof collapses and nearly three times as many minor roof collapses, not to mention the soon-to-be flooded homes as the mountains of snow melt in next week’s wild oscillation back to unseasonably high temps. As much as 90 inches of snow fell on the Buffalo area in just three days, prompting climatologist Paul Beckwith to tweet the following remarks:

Clear image of lake effect snow from NASA. Clouds and snow are to the South and East of each Great Lake. :

Decadal data proves that a warming world is making this lake-effect snowfall even more intense as humans continue their grand chemistry experiment with the planet’s atmosphere. The waters of the Great Lakes are getting warmer and losing their historic freeze point to form ice cover during winter; thus an increasing temperature differential between the warm waters of the lakes and the cold Arctic air passing overhead provides greater energy for stronger lake-effect snowfalls. The more heat energy we inject into Earth’s atmosphere, the more statistically likely that freak weather and powerful storms will occur. Fossil fuel-burning humans are continuing to load the dice of climate chaos and the big losers will most certainly be the future generations of every living thing on the planet.

Lake Erie is warming (along with the rest of the planet) by a steady but measurable amount. Since 1960 that trend has been about a half of a degree Fahrenheit per decade. More important than this, though, Lake Erie has been losing its ability to freeze over in the winter, with a decline of about one sub-freezing day per year in recent decades. – Link

Concomitantly, lake-effect snow events are increasing in the interim as the Arctic melts away and loses its ability to regulate global weather patterns.

Deformed Jet Stream

According to climate experts Jennifer Francis and others, Anthropogenic global warming is altering jet stream behavior and making certain weather extremes more likely to occur:

“We know that the Arctic is warming much faster than everywhere else on the planet,” Francis said. That’s important because the speed of the jet stream as it moves eastwards is driven by the temperature differential between the Arctic and areas to the south.

“Because the warming is so fast, it’s causing that temperature differential to become smaller, and as a result the winds, west-east winds, are getting weaker,” Francis said.

When the jet stream weakens, it tends to wander more north and south — instead of its usually straight circle around the Northern Hemisphere. Francis said that scientists measuring the “waviness” of the jet stream have found that it becomes wavier as the Arctic melts. Masters echoed Francis, saying, “We’ve experienced record loss of Arctic sea ice and … when that happens it can influence the jet stream to allow more frequent plunges over the eastern part of the U.S.”

“We’ve had record-breaking Arctic sea ice loss over the last 15 years, and we’ve seen a lot more of these Arctic plunges over the eastern two-thirds of the U.S., starting around 2000,” Masters added. – Link

————————-

…the evidence in her favor is mounting — she cites no fewer than five (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) scientific papers published in the last year or so that she considers supportive, and hints that more are coming. “We’ve got 5 papers that all look at that particular mechanism in different ways — different analysis, different data sets, observation and models — and they all come to the same conclusion and they all identify this mechanism independently,” she says. – Link

Anthropogenic Climate Disruption is Still Greek to Most Americans

If polling studies are any indication, all of this talk about jet streams, extreme weather, and the melting Arctic is still greek to the average American:

The survey also reveals a “misunderstanding” of climate change as only one in 10 of those polled said they know that more than 90 percent of climate scientists say humans are contributing to global warming. Just half blame human activity while even fewer are “very worried” about climate change.

“Very few Americans are aware that 97 percent of climate scientists agree that global warming is human caused,” the authors said. “This public misunderstanding of the scientific consensus — which has been found in each of our surveys since 2008 — has significant consequences.” – Link

And the politicians are still talking out of both sides of their mouths on the subject:

As are corporations:

And to the very end, the climate change illiterate will continue to drown out those who still have a certain level of brain activity:

And lastly, the multiple environmental crises we face are like a multi-headed hydra. Cut one head off with a techno-fix and it grows two more. Even those who are well-read and knowledgable on climate change still hold fast to a techno-utopian future, clueless as to what is and isn’t sustainable:

Remember… it’s the economy, stupid!

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About xraymike79

I’m a social critic, political/cultural commentator and artist. The modern industrial world is sleepwalking towards the cliff of economic and ecological ruin. Most are oblivious to the paradigm shift that is occurring, but some are starting to awaken to the false stories our culture has told itself. My objective is to highlight important news stories and essays to find the hidden truth behind what Joe Bageant called the American Hologram.
www.collapseofindustrialcivilization.com

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66 thoughts on “Climate Chaos Casino: Another Roll of the Dice”

“There’s a fair chance that the temperature in Sydney city will go close to 40 tomorrow, as the coastal sea breeze circulation may fail to become truly established,” said Alex Zadnik, meteorologist at Weatherzone.

35 C/ 95 F with Force 5 wind from the west: Idiot tourists don’t understand Total Fire Ban. Smoking in the park, Followed by a dry thunderstorm. Sunday,135 km from Canberra & 200 km from Sydney. Remember: the Arctic is a sea, Antarctica is a continent; so, there is no reason to expect them to respond in the same manner. Unless, of course, one is a moron.

…“We will have 400 parts per million next year and that is fairly certain,” said Pieter Tans, a senior scientist with NOAA’s Climate Monitoring and Diagnostics Laboratory, in Boulder, Colorado.

The precise figure 400ppm is, in itself, just a number and has no particular physical significance but the level of 400ppm is seen as a milestone by many climate scientists and others. According to Tans, the significance lies in the fact that once the 400ppm threshold is crossed there will no going back and that “on the time scale of human civilisation” it is a one-way trip…

…“This is truly irreversible, once the CO2 is in the atmosphere and the oceans then it will remain there for a long, long time, for many thousands and thousands of years until geological processes remove it,” Tans told reportingclimatescience.com. “The last time the Earth was at this level was a couple of million years ago,” he added…

Nothing in the world is funnier than American public opinion. I think I remember hearing somewhere that 25% of Americans believe the sun revolves around the earth.

75% of river-bank and -aquatic life have disappeared in the last 50 years.
75,000 dams have been constructed for more than the last 50 years.
There are like 8 dams and fish ladders on the Columbia River and in 2009, only one salmon made it all the way home past all 8 dams.

Naomi Klein and Bill McKibben work for the Rockefellers at 350.org to make sure that any future carbon tax dividends are controlled by corporations and governments, and not 100% controlled by private citizens as James Hansen advocates.

THE RUNDOWN
► Humans and livestock were 0.01% of land vertebrate biomass 10,000 yrs. ago.
► Humans and our livestock are now 97% of land vertebrate biomass.
► Humans and our livestock eat 40% of land chlorophyll biomass.
► 50% of vertebrate species died off in the last 50 years.
► 50% of remaining vertebrate species will die off in the next 40 years.
► 75% species loss = Mass Extinction.
► Ocean acidification doubles by 2050, triples by 2100.
► in just 13 years, we will lock in a near term 6°C earth temp rise..
► World Bank says we have 5-10 years before we all fight for food and water.

THE ENERGY PICTURE
► Energy demands to increase 50% by 2060.
► Emissions have to decrease 80% by 2060.
► 40% Green Energy requires 200% more copper says John Timmer.
► To power England with 100% solar & wind, requires 25% of its land says David MacKay.
► Peak copper hits 2030 – 2040 says Ugo Bardi.
► There is no real substitute for copper says Mat McDermott of Motherboard.
► Post peak copper production cannot accelerate at any price says Dave Lowell.
► This is true of any post peak mineral production.
► We mined 50% of all the copper in human history in just the last 30 years.
► 100% green energy requires 500% more copper.
► Peak minerals includes more than just copper.
► By 2050, expect to be past peaks for tin, silver, cadmium and more.
► We now move 3 billion tons of earth per year to get 15 millions tons of copper.
► We can’t afford to mine 500% more copper at ever lower concentrations.
► We cannot recycle it into existence.
► We cannot conserve it into existence.

WE ARE IN THE MIDDLE OF THE 6TH MASS EXTINCTION EVENT
► Green Energy is our solution to Climate Change.
► But, Climate Change is only 1 of 6 Direct Drivers for Mass Extinction.
► The 6 Direct Drivers of Mass Extinction are:
….1) Invasive Species
….2) Over-Population
….3) Over-Exploitation
….4) Habitat Loss
….5) Climate Change
….6) Pollution
► Therefore,
…. GREEN ENERGY WILL NOT STOP THE END OF LIFE ON EARTH!|

When the president of the World Bank says we will start fighting for food and water in as little as 5 to 10, he’s not mumbling some academic abstraction. Food prices are set to take another leap up this year, it can’t go on too much longer. When food prices set off the Arab Spring, we helped the starving people in those countries by paying mercenaries to attack them. When the financial system crashed, Communist China saved world Capitalism using extreme debt. China has produced the largest and fastest financial bubble in human history. China is coming in for a crash landing, but thank god that they are so corrupt that they are only too willing to rig the system to keep it going as long as possible. A few years after the oil & gas fracking bubble pops here, Americans will be in severe energy poverty because solar panels and wind turbines only last 25 years.

CHINA OWNS AMERICA
► China has produced 6 gigatons of cement in the last 3 years.
► The U.S. has produced 4 gigatons of cement in the last 100 years.
► China’s banks have produced $15 trillion in debt in the last 5 years.
► U.S. commercial banks have produced $15 trillion in debt in the last 100 years.
► 60,000 U.S. factories have closed up shop and moved to China.
► China plans to build 400 nuclear power plants by 2050.

The reason that oil & gas fracking works so well in America is because this land is so sparsely populated compared to England. Treehuggers in England are losing their shit over the first video by Peter MacKay.

I am a very lucky person, because my grandfather, who was a 70 year old hippy in the 1970s taught me organic farming survivalism in Nova Scotia Canada. I live deep in the woods in Northern Ontario Canada in a log cabin and 20 acres of forest. I just bought a wood stove to heat the house, and have plenty of deer outside. I know how to preserve deer meat in mason jars. Every week, I buy 2 extra packs of straight noodles and store them in the basement. Salmon in a can may be able to last up to 4 years without spoiling. Will I last much longer than your average New York City dweller? Probably not, but I don’t give shit, because to me, not being prepared is worse.

I lived with a couple of crazy bush whacking French Canadians (Luc & Maurice) from North Bay, in the 1990’s for a few years in Vancouver. They moved back after less than a decade on the west coast. They will probably last as long as anyone. That Maurice, saw him eat stuff that would make a billy goat puke, tabernac. I think too many armed, hungry people will make it out of the cities and big towns and decimate the remaining wildlife.

lol
2 french trappers were in a bush camp, one was young, the other old, the young one asked the old one what to do without any women around, the old one told the young one that the best thing was to use a rabbit pelt as a stroke mitten. when the older one came back to camp early and caught the younger one using his stroke mitten, he killed him in a fit of rage. he probably said something like this:

This will become a regular feature, i’m afraid, as we move up the exponential effects ladder, but worse and worse and/or more and more frequently. Already Buffalo is going to rapidly melt, then go right back to cold by the end of the week. Pipes aren’t that flexible, last I checked, to rapid freeze and thaw conditions – not to mention what trees will be going through with that massive weight on weakened limbs (from ozone and other factors). I guess we’ll find out.

While people may be unconcerned about a specific storm type, it will suddenly dawn on them before long that there are so many interrelated changes going on – from methane seeping from the ground (along with hydrogen sulfide, a neurotoxin that’s highly reactive) causing more explosions and fires to sinkholes, earthquakes, Fukushima radiation continually being deposited into the biosphere, drought and flooding, food shortages, disease, animal attacks (including pets), solar activity, all this and more added to the regular global circus of crime, economic and political turmoil – that they won’t be able to keep up.

Psychologically we’ll see more people cracking and going out in spectacularly imaginative ways.

Many people over the past three years fried in vehicles that suddenly burst into flame, while many other drivers are found in submerged vehicles, and still more just veer into oncoming traffic or go completely off the road and hit all manner of objects: people, buildings, trees, walls, bridge abutments, etc.

This year especially there has been a big uptick in college students, prisoners and hunters, runners and fishermen dropping dead with no signs of trauma (or with foaming at the mouth type symptoms). I’ve read news stories of people suddenly bursting into flame just walking down the street.

Since our infrastructure continues to degrade, with maintenance falling ever further behind, any confidence in the electrical system is becoming problematic due to transformers, substations, wiring, and utility poles erupting in flame.

An enormous blast was just caught in Russia on many dashcams, similar to the blazing meteoroid chunks they’ve had, but much more explosive and there was no debris – one could easily imagine a rather large cloud of methane erupting as being the source of this “unknown” explosion. Just days before, Moscow was enveloped in a massive cloud of sickeningly smelly gas from an unknown source.

Animals, marine life, and plants are all dying off at an increasing rate and the loss will become more noticeable as time goes on.

With the recent declaration that this year has taken the lead in hottest year on record for global average temperature, combined with the heading into the 400’s in ppm of CO2, and the rest – we’re truly living in “interesting” times.

I should think the cost of house insurance will be going up in areas increasingly subject to these climate upheavals. Eventually people will be forced to give up insurance and will be wiped out at the next crisis. The same applies to corporations that provide services like electricity, airports, railways, who all need public liability insurance.

There’s no way that industrial civilisation can keep growing as the costs (both financial and energetic) of extracting, transporting and burning fossil fuels keeps going up. In fact we can see this happening right now with Japan (with no local fossil fuels) having been in stagnation for decades, and Europe since 2008. Governments can try to delay the effect by printing more and more fiat currency, but they are only kicking the can down the road. In the end there will be a gigantic collapse from which no one can recover – it could happen next week. In that event, climate change will never reach the frightening levels predicted by IPCC based on BAU forecasting.

Even if we stopped yesterday, we would get to 2.5c It’s already in the pipe. Add the self reinforcing feedback loops that are already under way and it just keeps going. We are not in control. Once industrial civilization ends that does not mean burning things for fuel ends. People will burn whatever they can get their hands on to cook, keep warm and for small scale industry. At that point there will be no environmental laws; just survival.

According to IPCC (summarised at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representative_Concentration_Pathways#Projections_based_on_the_RCPs )
scenario RCP 2.6, which represents FF burning peaking 2010-20 and then declining, the temperature increase by 2100 over 1986-2005 average will be +1.0°C (range 0.3 – 1.7).
So if we stop altogether by yesterday, the temperature increase will be less than that.
If we follow a Peak Fossils trajectory, it will be somewhere between the two (RCP 2.6 being far higher than what peakists say can possibly occur).
If we follow a Peak Fossils until Collapse trajectory, it will be somewhere between the two but less than the previous figure.
Not +2.5°C, not even if you use 1850-1900 as a baseline and take the extreme of the range.

I know its hard to accept for people are earnestly engaged in trying to sell the idea of climate catastrophe, but Peak Fossils will save us from the worst of climate change. Peak Fossils will however be worse for humanity, and come much sooner.

I had a conversation with a climate scientist a few days ago and he stated that nobody really knows for certain how much more warming would occur if we stopped all industrial activity yesterday. He stated that 2.65°C is “both overprecise and very pessimistic”. Nonetheless, from the information I have gathered from reliable sources such as NASA and James Hansen, 2.65°C or greater is certainly a reasonable estimate. I understand and sympathise with your thinking, but you are no more correct than I am.

dave, your assuming the IPCC is the be all and end all on projections. I’m not. They are dated, minimized, incomplete and partially corrupted. Since the policy recommendations are completely lawyered up by many countries why should I believe their projections? I do not believe the projections are as corrupted as the policy, but it would be naive to think the scientists are only being pressured on the policy, but not on the projections. Remember the I in IPCC stands for Inter-governmental. Every government on this planet is now completely corrupted by big money. Gavin Schmidt, methane, Russians and The Royal Society are a good example that even big time scientists are not immune to careerism and who knows what else.

I’m not sure what you are arguing here. I believe the IPCC models are correct (they have been calibrated against the historical data, after all), but the FF-burning forecasts are too high, even the lowest one, RCP 2.6 (and B1-miniCAM in AR4). I am supported in this by Aleklett, Hook, Rutledge, Patzek and Croft, et al. For example:
“Validity of the fossil fuel production outlooks in the IPCC Emission Scenarios”,
Mikael Höök, Anders Sivertsson, and Kjell Aleklett (2010)
Natural Resources Research 19: 63-81.http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11053-010-9113-1

Clearly the wording of sections of AR5 like “Policy overview for politicians” are toned down due to the lobbying efforts of the FF industry, and actual climate policy efforts are likely to be full of loopholes and trickery, but the models themselves can’t be toned down. Or can they, is that what you are saying?

The accuracy of the models is determined by the data input. If they leave feed-backs out and are known to err on the side of least drama you can get major underestimates; like being off by decades on Arctic sea ice. In addition, we know many scientists are under a great deal of pressure to downplay and minimize. In Canada the Harper gang fired many environmental scientists and the rest are vetted before they can talk to the press. To say this has no effect on their work would be naive.

Any chance of an unpaywalled copy/link to that article?
More importantly, how big a change in the algorithms of the climate models could this represent, in comparison to the clearly unrealistic forecasts of FF burning to 2100 being fed into the models?

The methane feedback loops are probably not included in the models because the data that has been collected is nowhere near enough to create a robust algorithm. Obviously it would be very expensive to undertake a widescale survey of methane emissions from Arctic sub-marine/permafrost zones, and it would have to be done over a considerable period of time because this is a dynamic system undergoing considerable change, and about to see more. Nevertheless, if someone can make an argument that it is vital to do this, would political forces be able to stop it?

Creating an additional methane feedback module to plug-in to the standard models is easy enough. If runs of the model with the methane module accounted for the error in Arctic sea-ice predictions based on historical data (say using pre-2005 data to predict 2005-2014 results, which then be checked against reality) then the extra module would be widely adopted quickly. The fact that this hasn’t happened implies it can’t be done yet.

Another complicating factor is Arctic sea-ice extent involves counting pixels in satellite images, and since pixels represent areas, the method ignores “small” ice bergs. How small? – well, quite big actually. Then the effects of weather can cause more (or less) ice break-up which the formal definition of sea-ice extent will then treat as water. Thus the annual variations of minimum sea-ice extent can cause extraordinary minima (as in 2012) which probably won’t be repeated for another 10 years. Uninformed commentators then pounce on this weather-induced statistic and declare the IPCC models to be wrong and IPCC to be biased, when they are probably still right.

is an example of another difficulty. The trend line shown is linear, and mathematicians would know that the phenomenon almost certainly is not linear – it is the result of a complex system after all. But the temptation is to project the straight line forward until the value is zero, and read off the year, and declare “the data shows the Arctic will be ice-free in …”, which is incorrect. The effect is even more pronounced when the data has just dipped (as in 2012), causing some to declare “the Arctic will be ice-free in 3 years” ! Those members of the public who want urgent climate action are all too happy to believe these erroneous predictions.

For completeness, the IPCC definition of “nearly ice-free” is when there is less than a million square kilometers of ice for 5 years in a row, based on each pixel/area having less than 15% of ice.

A new report exploring the impact of climate change in Latin America and the Caribbean, the Middle East and North Africa, and Eastern Europe and Central Asia finds that warming of close to 1.5°C above pre-industrial times is already locked into the Earth’s atmospheric system by past and predicted greenhouse gas emissions.

And their calculations don’t take into account temperature rise after industrial aerosols fall out of the air. That would equate to an additional 1.1°C to 1.2°C rise. Thus, my calculations are correct…

The IPCC report doesn’t include methane feedback loop data in its models. China has only recently promised to cap emissions by 2030. Kevin Anderson says we have to reduce emissions 80% by 2030. Faith in models without any consideration for the intrusion of unexpected consequences is misleading. We are in overshoot. Any notions of

Dr. Bruce Jennings says we have always been outside the worse case emissions scenario (RPC 8.5) since 2007. Any notions of emissions peak by 2020 is a blinkered view of reality, and stopping emissions like yesterday is physically impossible. Jennings says that continuing on our current worse case trajectory will lead, in just 13 years, to a lock in for a near term 6°C earth temp rise. He maintains that on our current emissions path, the rise will be inevitable, although it may be slowed down.

It’s a pretty big site for sure. Sometimes I can get 1/2 game of solitaire in while waiting for the site to load, but, like the man said, it is most defiantly worth the wait. Not only are some of the regular commenters fucking brilliant, but they’re funny too!

Abstract

The severity of damaging human-induced climate change depends not only on the magnitude of the change but also on the potential for irreversibility. This paper shows that the climate change that takes place due to increases in carbon dioxide concentration is largely irreversible for 1,000 years after emissions stop. Following cessation of emissions, removal of atmospheric carbon dioxide decreases radiative forcing, but is largely compensated by slower loss of heat to the ocean, so that atmospheric temperatures do not drop significantly for at least 1,000 years. Among illustrative irreversible impacts that should be expected if atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations increase from current levels near 385 parts per million by volume (ppmv) to a peak of 450–600 ppmv over the coming century are irreversible dry-season rainfall reductions in several regions comparable to those of the “dust bowl” era and inexorable sea level rise. Thermal expansion of the warming ocean provides a conservative lower limit to irreversible global average sea level rise of at least 0.4–1.0 m if 21st century CO2 concentrations exceed 600 ppmv and 0.6–1.9 m for peak CO2 concentrations exceeding ≈1,000 ppmv. Additional contributions from glaciers and ice sheet contributions to future sea level rise are uncertain but may equal or exceed several meters over the next millennium or longer.

…Whatever flavor of severe, even deadly weather is currently targeting your general area, it almost certainly has nothing on the Arctic “icepocalypse” that devastated Sweden’s Svalbard archipelago two winters ago, knocking out radio communications, killing off herds of reindeer, and capturing everything in a thick armor of ice.

​As described in this week’s edition of the Environmental Research Letters, the event consisted of a two-week period of unseasonable warmth, with average temperatures in January and February of 4 degrees Celsius (40 degrees Fahrenheit). The average for the area is around -16°C. The warmth resulted in permafrost warming/melting up to 5 meters below the surface. This is on top of a larger, decades-old permafrost warming trend that’s so-far extended a full 60 meters below the surface…

…For wildlife, the ice caused something known as pasture locking. Basically, this is when ice keeps foraging animals from their winter food supplies. Past icing events saw herds drop by as much as 70 percent, which might even be considered a conservative figure for what happened in 2012…

…It shouldn’t be a surprise to hear that the Svalbard icepocalypse is a postcard from the climate change future. The effects of global warming will be more pronounced and felt sooner in tundra regions like this one than pretty much anywhere else. The study, which comes courtesy of a team led by the Norwegian University of Science and Technology’s Brage B Hansen, paints a bleak picture.

“The predicted warming implies more frequent episodes with above-zero winter temperatures,” the paper explains, “and if the projections hold, we can even expect to see some winters with mid-winter mean temperatures above 0 °C after about 2050. Accordingly, the frequency of [rain-on-snow] events and annual [rain-on-snow] amount will likely increase dramatically as the probability of crossing the near-zero °C threshold for precipitation falling as rain rather than snow increases.”

“Clearly, this may have far-reaching implications for Arctic societies and ecosystems through changes in snow-pack and permafrost properties,” Hansen et al warn. “Accordingly, this study from an Arctic ‘hotspot’ of climate change represents a bellwether of how winter climate change, and extreme events in particular, may cause radical changes in the geophysical environment, with a multitude of severe effects on society and wildlife.”

…About 7 percent of China’s greenhouse gas emissions currently come from the transport segment, versus 28 percent in the U.S., according to data compiled by Bloomberg New Energy Finance from sources including U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Power generation accounts for almost half of China’s air pollution, compared with a third in the U.S.

“Imagine China being like the U.S., with one-quarter of emissions coming from cars — it would put huge pressure on the pledge to cap emissions,” said Jun Ying, lead China energy specialist at BNEF in Beijing. “It’s possible that China will have to slow the explosive growth in car ownership it saw in the past few years.”…

…“China’s car ownership is very likely to double from the current level, but the growth rate will drop sharply due to congestion and pollution in big cities,” said Harry Chen, an automotive analyst in Shenzhen with Guotai Junan Securities Co. “China will have to promote more electric and hybrid cars to meet emissions standard as we forecast sales will grow at a mild 7 to 9 percent a year. Car ownership may peak at 200 cars per 1,000 people for China.”…

sorry to dump update, use as you wish, will get u more links over the winter, all the best to you…

Nicki Carter If you want bitter, here you go:
Naomi Klein and Bill McKibben work for the Rockefellers at 350.org (google it) to make sure that any future carbon tax dividends are controlled by corporations and governments, and not 100% controlled by private citizens as James Hansen advocates.

THE ENERGY PICTURE
► Energy demands to increase 50% by 2060 says Fatih Birol.
► Emissions have to decrease 80% by 2030 says Kevin Anderson.
► To power England with 100% solar & wind, requires 25% of its land says David MacKay.
► 40% Green Energy requires 200% more copper says John Timmer.
► Peak copper hits 2030 – 2040 says Ugo Bardi.
► There is no real substitute for copper says Mat McDermott of Motherboard.
► Post peak copper production cannot accelerate at any price says Dave Lowell.
► This is true of any post peak mineral production.
► We mined 50% of all the copper in human history in just the last 30 years.
► 100% green energy requires 500% more copper.
► Peak minerals includes more than just copper.
► By 2050, expect to be past peaks for tin, silver, cadmium and more.
► We now move 3 billion tons of earth per year to get 15 millions tons of copper.
► We can’t afford to mine 500% more copper at ever lower concentrations.
► We cannot recycle it into existence.
► We cannot conserve it into existence.

THE RUNDOWN
► Humans and livestock were 0.01% of land vertebrate biomass 10,000 yrs. ago.
► Humans and our livestock are now 97% of land vertebrate biomass.
► Humans and our livestock eat 40% of land chlorophyll biomass.
► 50% of vertebrate species died off in the last 50 years.
► 50% of remaining vertebrate species will die off in the next 40 years.
► 75% species loss = Mass Extinction.
► Ocean acidification doubles by 2050, triples by 2100.
► in just 13 years, we will lock in a near term 6°C earth temp rise..
► World Bank says we have 5-10 years before we all fight for food and water.

WE ARE IN THE MIDDLE OF THE 6TH MASS EXTINCTION EVENT
► Green Energy is our solution to Climate Change.
► But, Climate Change is only 1 of 6 Direct Drivers for Mass Extinction.
► The 6 Direct Drivers of Mass Extinction are:
….1) Invasive Species
….2) Over-Population
….3) Over-Exploitation
….4) Habitat Loss
….5) Climate Change
….6) Pollution
► Therefore,
…. GREEN ENERGY WILL NOT STOP THE END OF LIFE ON EARTH!

…The papers, each of which were co-authored by the renowned physicist and geoengineering research proponent ​David ​Keith, primarily examine one particular mode of climate tinkering—solar radiation management. Often shortened to SRM by science wonks, it most typically consists of dispersing sulfate aerosols—sulfuric acid—into the atmosphere, where they would bounce back a small percentage of incoming sunlight, thus cooling the planet.

The effect is not unlike a volcanic eruption, which disperses sun-blocking particles into the sky—which is exactly why it’s the most-studied geoengineering proposal out there. (It’s no coincidence that ​another new study published this week found that small volcanic eruptions help slow the rate of global warming). It’s also relatively cheap: For a few billion dollars a year, one could theoretically cool the globe a matter of degrees.

That’s why Keith and his colleagues want to experiment…

…Here are the rough calculations: If humankind maxes out our rate of greenhouse gas emissions to the point that it leads to a rise of 0.1°C per decade, the scientists figure it would require annual geoengineering—dusting the atmosphere with a load of sulfate—for 160 years to keep temperatures in the ‘normal’ human-friendly range. If we head toward an even heavier emissions scenario before pulling back, it could be twice that long. That’s 320 years of geoengineering, folks—three centuries of jets dusting the planet with faux-volcanic spray…

Michelle Boorstein has the big run-down of all the numbers from the survey, and we would urge folks to check out her story. The end-times view is held by especially large numbers of white evangelical Christians (77 percent) and black Protestants (74 percent).

The fact that half of Americans cite the end times as a cause of recent severe weather events suggests a kind of fatalism that would certainly lead to less urgency when it comes to issues like climate change. Even many of those who believe in climate change — and about one-quarter of Americans don’t, per the survey — seem to think natural disasters are part of something that is preordained.

In addition, 39 percent of Americans say God would not allow humans to destroy the Earth (53 percent disagree). So, apparently, most of those who believe we’re in the end times also believe God would intervene. Basically at least four in 10 Americans see little reason for a human response — or, at least, doubt things will wind up being catastrophic.

It should be no surprise, then, that of all the issues tested by PRRI’s poll, climate change is viewed as the least important. Just 5 percent rate it as the No. 1 issue, behind things like immigration, education and the wealth gap.

Hm… industrial civilisation emerged from western christianity. One could argue, that Jesus returned long time ago, because (for catholics) he is really present at eucharist. So – with the first mass, he came back, and his presence slowly grew with the spread of christianity. And when the – quite unsustainable – roman empire became christian, his millenial rule started, transforming the roman empire (or what remained after its collapse) in the holy roman empire, which probably was quite sustainable with its feudal, substistency based decentralized economy focussed not on money but on serving god (with mystical religious practices that could deliver real experience and a built environment that embodied to a high degree natural morphogenetic principles)
But, as it is written in the apocalypse, the devil has to be freed once more after 1000 years, and first slowly then ever faster capitalism emerged, ripping of all chains…

Now we are in the worst possible situation, and well, I think nothing is preordained here, it is upon us to decide, it is upon every single one to decide, how to relate to this situation, and how to us ones capabilities that are a gift from god… (but ok, I´m not evangelical, but an austrian catholic)

I think, aligning the collapse & sustainability narrative with – least distorted – religious narratives of all kind – has a tremendous potential for billions of people to get orientation and motivation to act. So, the graph above could indicate a ressource, not only a problem…

The goddamn apes are killing the planet. They’re only human most superficially, apes just below the surface supported by a reptilian core of infinite greed and avarice. We’ve reached the last exponential doubling and it’s already faltering and you may think that’s a good sign pointing to endless sustainability, perpetual care in the loving arms of technology. But think again, we haven’t reached some state of ontological maturity equipped to make a go of it for thousands of years. On the contrary, we’ve grown like a cancer. We’ve eaten the home place and have nowhere else to go. We’re now waiting for nature to kill us, which she does to those whose planning and assembly have gone horribly wrong. Thanksgiving prayer: “Thank you Lord for letting us off our leash and feeding us like a cancer for the last millennium. Thank you also dear Lord for these mutant Turkeys called Butterball, Honeysuckle, Honey Boo Boo, and Flightless Wonder. If you could just work some of your miracles on these here oysters and Uncle Willie’s deep fryer burns we would be eternally grateful. And especially protect us from harm as we wait in joyful hope for a successful Black Friday. Amen.”

The fossil fuel companies hunt like predators seeking large deposits of fossil fuels, large chunks to be fed to their societal bodies for digestion, turned into ATP to fire the motions of metabolism. Like a fox hunting game that has gone sterile, first the large and slow ones go, the ones easiest to catch, the ones with a high EROEI. Next the smaller ones go, the mice, the ones you have to dig for with little return. Oh, the cells are getting a little hungry, their molecules need ATP and some amino acids, but they’re not forthcoming. The body says, “Starve the periphery, save the essential organs”, and then someone yells TARP and save GM and then interest rates get cut to zero, the central bank starts buying stocks and the essential organs begin to bleed the periphery dry. Damn, for my next job, I want to work at one of those “too big to fail” corporations. And when all the fat is gone, they start burning the muscle to keep the society alive, but before that they look around and see if any other foxes have something to eat and they try to take it from them, before they have to curl up in a corner and die. The banks will be too big to fail like a heart with a myocardial infarction is too big to fail. When the organs go, that’s when the stuff stops flowing through the veins and the wastes don’t get removed. It’s game over. Multi-societal organ failure. That’s not going to be a good time for anyone.

Getty, the technology is failing to meet challenges today. It’s more likely that complexity ends with a singular attack of mother nature’s methane flatulence. Ahhh, that techno heaven sure would be nice though as long as I get one of those robot voices. Just makes me tingle all over.

Excerpt from Techno-Fix: Why Technology Won’t Save Us or the Environment
…
If anyone wants me to mail my copy to them after I’m done with it, let me know. Otherwise, ask for it at your local public library.

“Free” markets radically restrict choices to individual consumption…exaggerating the most negative aspects of human potentiality. It turns you into someone who is dedicated to maximizing individual gain without social concern… creates a sociopathic society and is completely unsustainable:

A new report exploring the impact of climate change in Latin America and the Caribbean, the Middle East and North Africa, and Eastern Europe and Central Asia finds that warming of close to 1.5°C above pre-industrial times is already locked into the Earth’s atmospheric system by past and predicted greenhouse gas emissions.

And their calculations don’t take into account temperature rise after industrial aerosols fall out of the air. That would equate to an additional 1.1°C to 1.2°C rise. Thus, my calculations are correct…

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Who really pulls the strings?:

The megawealthy and Washington have become so symbiotic as to be a single entity. The bought-and-paid politicians sitting in Washington are simply the marionettes of the corporations and financial elite who are dictating public policy and regulations.

Preserving the Status Quo

There is no right wing or left wing, only the aristocracy and the serfs (a vertical paradigm).
To know this is to be like a fish who has broken the surface of the water, realizing he was in water the whole time.

A Kabuki Play

"What we have, in what passes for US democracy in 2012, is a kabuki play that Cicero put to papyrus 1948 years earlier. All historical empires and war aggressors have used propaganda to claim their looting and police states were necessary and helpful to the 99%. Instead, a sorrowful history tells us they were almost always for the sole benefit of the 1%."
- Albert Bates

Professor Rick Wolff explains why growth has become a focus of our modern political system. He describes how inequality is created by the way our enterprises are organized. Because a significant portion of our lives are at work, how would our society look if democratic businesses became the new normal? What would be the environmental and social implications […]

The Firefly Gathering offers a wide range of classes for adults and children on primitive skills, permaculture, nature connection, and eco-homesteading that are designed to be able to be applied to enhance everyday life. The gathering gathers a bevy of inspiring, amazing people. Besides classes it offers evening entertainment, basic infrastructure, and on-si […]

Throughout his life James Joyce attempted to escape – from war, religion, convention, narrative structure, language… “When the soul of a man is born in this country there are nets flung at it to hold it back from flight.… Read more

A nation’s stories play a large part in its future. Established ideas become conventional wisdom in social institutions. The institutions then draw on this wisdom when enacting public policy.… Read more